


Because He's Mine

by FelineJaye



Series: Maxvid Appreciation Week (2017) [5]
Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Gen, M/M, Maxvid Week, Minor Violence, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, child molester!Candy, implied serial child rapist!David, pedophile!David, predatory behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 00:45:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13693338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelineJaye/pseuds/FelineJaye
Summary: When the zombie apocalypse comes, David makes some decisions that he's ashamed of. When he meets Max, things start to get better.If only Candy hadn't meddled with the dynamic.





	Because He's Mine

**Author's Note:**

> No explicit smut, this time, hence why it's just implied maxvid. Bonus points if you get the Easter Egg cameo character mentioned in the fic.

David found him while scavenging. Hiding up in a treehouse and very, very alone. He'd gone through most of the house before he'd even realised the boy was up there. He'd only learnt when a walkie-talkie and crackled and he'd heard the surly, high-pitched voice shout;

"Hey moron!"

Just in time for him to turn around and not be caught off guard by the zombie lunging at him. A frying pan to the head does her in and leaves David staring down at her rotten brains mixing with her auburn ponytail, contemplating the voice he just heard.

It takes some time to convince the boy to come down, convince him that his undead babysitter is re-dead and that he's safe. When he comes down, David's breath is taken away.

He stood at barely four feet tall, with bushy black hair, warm tawny skin and acid green eyes which pierced right though David.

So David resigned himself to the bad ending that he was about to create. A young boy, alone, unguarded, out here in the middle of nowhere? It was perfect. Just as perfect as it had been the last number of times. He reached forward to.. he wasn't sure. Touch his shoulder, stroke his cheek, caress his hair.

Which was when the zombie burst from the hedge behind them and lunged.

David's hand was already there so he acted on instinct - grabbed the boy's shoulder and yanked him towards him. He fell backwards, the boy on top of him, but for once he wasn't thinking about that. Instead he was scrambling backwards, trying to protect both of them from the monster that had burst out at them.

Then the zombie's head snapped to the side with a loud _bang_ , rotting blood and grey matter splattering out of it's temple. Their saviour approached with their rifle still held steady. They were helped up and it was only then that David heard the boy's name:

"I'm Max."

* * *

It was different after that. This wasn't just some random child - it was Max. Max, who he owed his life to. Max whom he'd saved. Snarky Max, funny Max, brave Max, cunning Max, tricky Max, resourceful Max, foul-mouthed Max.

David couldn't bring himself to hurt the boy. The empathy that he thought he'd lost back when the apocalypse started started to creep back in. The temptation pulled back and he found himself happy to just watch the boy eat, watch him laugh, watch him. He found himself looking out for Max, defending his behaviour, giving him the first share of scrounged food. Max was **precious**. A fabergé doll to be gazed upon and pampered but never, ever touched.

He didn't know how much Max noticed. How much the boy could figure out from the delicate treatment. He lashed out, sometimes, acting in violence or profanity. But was it because Max knew he was with a predator or because he wanted to be treated as a capable person? David couldn't be sure. Max was such a smart young boy - smart enough to figure him out and smart enough to want to be taken seriously.

David just knew that Max let him sleep next to him and curl around him protectively at night in their hidden, locked hideaways.

But maybe that was because David kept his staring for when Max's breathing slowed and evened. Maybe it was because the most he could make himself do was stroke the boy's arm while they curled up together.

Maybe it was because David was his best chance of survival.

* * *

They tended not to stay any one place for long. David got jittery, nervous and paranoid. People didn't last long in the apocalypse anyway but the few times that they stayed with anyone for longer than a few days David started to get the shakes.

He was convinced that they could tell what he was. Even groups comprised of only adults, he was sure they could tell. That they would glance at him or maybe take an extra look at Max and know where his inclinations lay. Know what he'd done to the girls and boys before Max.

He was convinced that he would go out to scavenge one day and would come back to a lynch mod ready to tear him apart. Worse, that he would come back to find them all gone. To find that they'd taken Max away from him.

He couldn't let that happen. Max was **his**. He didn't know what that meant, exactly, but he knew it anyway. Max was his thing, his boy, his special creature. He never claimed that he was his son. He knew that was wrong, somehow or for some reason. He guessed that Max would tell the truth and blow his lie immediately. But he just felt...

He'd saved Max. He'd found him. Finder's keepers, right? No one else owned the boy, so he got first dibs.

He wasn't sure if that was more or less fucked up than the rest of it.

* * *

They were taken in by a group with a holding in a shopping strip. They just had to make walls at either end of the walkway and then the shops lining the path where theirs to plunder. One of their hunters had found them while on an excursion and had offered to bring them back. That was thanks to Max, David suspected. Women and children first in the apocalypse, if you had any sense of empathy.

It was a good place, they had their own make-shift beds and they had food and water and that was most of what they could want. Which meant David was growing worried about how he would convince Max to leave when he couldn't stand it any more. He wouldn't leave Max behind but there was no good reason to leave.

It was three days in when he gained another reason to hurry their departure.

He had been standing at a shop front, watching Max conspire with a new friend of him. Neil - a year or two older if not Max's age. Lanky and nervous. Smart but in that way that made David a little surprised he'd survived this long. He wasn't cunning like Max was; he was just book smart.

A green haired woman had come to lean beside him, watching the two play.

She introduced herself as Candy and had asked if Max was David's.

"He's not my son. I'm just... looking out for him."

"Yeah, but is he _yours_."

The meaning had jolted through him, tonnes of knowledge filling him in that moment. Knowledge of what Candy knew, of what Candy was.

"Neil's mine, y'know."

She didn't mean her son, though he couldn't guess if he was that too or not. He knew what she meant.

David nodded while he pursued his lips and tried to keep his vomit on the inside. A fire burned inside him, everywhere that wasn't his stomach or throat slick with bile. Everything else burned hot and fierce.

"We could make an arrangement, you know. I wouldn't mind a bit of **spice** in my life."

"No." David practically spat it out.

She raised her eyebrows at him. How were they so well-groomed? How did she have the time or resources for that?

"Fuck, sure, whatever. Your loss."

And with a flick of her hips and a bounce of her tits, Candy walked away.

* * *

He spent a week terrified that Candy was going to say something.

He hadn't said anything incriminating. Neither of them had, actually. But he knew what she was and she knew what he was and he knew that she knew and she knew that he knew and they both knew that the other one knew that they knew and-!

And he was terrified.

He'd tried to convince Max that they should leave, should move on. But as he'd feared Max wasn't having it. The place was too good, too safe, too well-stocked. Max had a friend and had food and had a bed and he didn't want to leave. He tried not to be jealous as he watched the two boys play. That's what Max should be doing at his age, he should be playing with his peers. But every minute Max spent playing was a minute that he wasn't beside David.

He'd never liked David as much as he liked Neil.

David's saving grace was that Max didn't seem to like **any** adult. The closest he got was preferring adults who he could manipulate into doing what he wanted. David was not one of those adults so Max preferred to try his tricks on others instead. David found that hilariously ironic since he knew that Max could make him do almost literally anything he wanted if he just knew the right buttons to push. Or the right buttons to undo.

Even without Max's tricks working, David still had a terrible time saying no to him. If Max knew what it was that triggered David into a more gullible state the boy could get anything he wanted.

If he knew what to do he could convince David to stop fighting and just stay at the holding.

It wouldn't have been for long, though.

* * *

They had been there for a week and a half when a windstorm knocked down the walls and the zombies flooded in. David grabbed Max's hand and Max grabbed Neil's hand and they ran from the place. They snuck through the shops and around the edges of the outside until they were out of the place.

When they heard a roaring sound approaching, David shoved them down, told them to hide, and went out to investigate with his rifle raised.

Around the corner was a car haphazardly parked, and Candy jumping out of the driver's seat. She was shouting something at him, telling him to get the boys, to get inside. David wasn't listening. He could see the car and he could see his future stretched out before him. He could see himself pushing Max and Neil into the car and the four of them escaping. He could see them stopping for the night and Candy touching Neil. Encouraging him to use what was his. Encouraging them to share. He could see the dystopia laid out in front of him as clear as day despite the black and stormy night they stood in.

And David raised his rifle and shot her through the head.

He went back to grab Max and Neil, hurrying them forward to the car. He tried to push them around to the passenger side of the car, but of course they saw Candy's bright green hair as she bleed on the concrete below them.

"Is that my step-mom?!"

"What happened to her?"

"She'd turned," David lied without thinking about it, "It was mercy."

They bundled into the car and drove away.

* * *

He didn't think that Neil believed him. Max didn't seem to question it, though whether that was out of apathy or not he couldn't tell. But Neil brought it up more than once. Said that she hadn't looked undead, that if she'd been dead then why had the car already been on, who had been driving it? The undead couldn't drive.

Neil was smart. He had too many questions that David couldn't answer.

He was smart. He flinched when David touched him. A hand on his hair or his shoulder. Neil would cringe back and look up at him, fearful and hateful.

Neil knew too much. Candy had defiled him too much and he knew it.

He started staring at David whenever David was near Max. Would stare when he touched Max's arm or shoulder or tousled his hair or picked him up. He started tugging Max away, encouraging Max to leave David behind. The more he tried, the more David reached out. The more he wanted to hold Max tight to him and never let go.

He'd been okay just watching Max. As long as he knew that he wasn't going to leave, he was okay just watching.

But Neil was threatening that. Neil was threatening them. He was going to wreck everything.

At first David slept between them, a monstrous papa bear holding his cubs to him. It didn't take long for Neil to start trying to sleep on Max's other side and then start trying to pull Max away into a separate bed. He would frown and scowl at David and David would smile like he wasn't terrified inside his skull.

He tried to cry silently, tried to not let it show how much Neil was breaking him apart. The silent accusations tearing his heart apart. He tried to pretend his biggest fear was the undead.

* * *

He hated Neil and it brought all the old temptations back tenfold. He wanted to throttle the boy, to hurt him. And if he was already hurting him physically then he may as well branch out into other types of harm.

When Neil held Max's hand he wanted to snap all twenty-seven of the offending bones. When they stood close with their head's bent to each other David wanted to snap the boy's neck. When Neil frowned at him, that suspicious lilt to eyes, he wanted to punch him square in the face. And to never, ever stop.

When Neil squirmed away at night, his stomach turned over and he took the pain as owed karma. When he put his hands on Max and tried to pull the other boy away, David wanted to grab his skinny wrists and hold him until he bruised. He wanted to yank Neil over to him, hold him tight and make sure he couldn't move. Wanted to pull Neil on top of him.

When he slept he dreamed of holding Neil under him and showing him how much worse it could be. When he woke he dreamed of giving Neil something to really be worried about.

It didn't work like that, he knew.

But he was no less angry.

* * *

"I know what you are." Neil said.

They were words that had haunted David's most violent and paranoid nightmares. Being found out. Being told that they recognised that he was a worse monster than the undead roaming the dying Earth.

"Wh-what?" he asked, y'know, like a liar.

"You're a pedophile."

Fuck.

"I- what- why would-"

Neil turned to him, serious.

"Have you touched Max? He-" the boy snapped his mouth shut, understanding that anything else could influence David's answer.

They stood, Neil facing him and David nervously pretending to look over at where Max was. He was fishing, a skill he'd had before the apocalypse and one they had to utilise. He said that they were too loud and had to wait back away from him while he fished. He didn't used to say that when it was just the two of them. Another thing David hated Neil for.

He shook his head, terse.

"I haven't touched you, either." he said in a low voice.

He really didn't want Max to overhear. Neil didn't turn away. The forest creaked with the sound of trees, the river bubbling with movement.

"Candy wasn't dead when you found her, was she?"

"She-"

"I won't hate you if you killed her. I know what she did was child molestation."

"...I killed her."

David side-eyed Neil, looking down with just his eyes.

"What did she do to you?"

Neil shrugged, "It was dumb. She just. She'd push my head into her tits. Hold me there and finger herself. Sometimes she'd hug me and rub herself on me."

There was nothing David could really say to that.

"She... I don't think she was like you. She was just horny, y'know? But you..."

David gulped at Neil's look. He was right, it wasn't like that for him. Neil walked around to stand in front of him.

"If you actually give a single shit about us, if you have a single regret, you'd just shoot yourself. Killing Candy doesn't make up for you being a piece of shit human being."

He was frowning.

"Don't be silly, Neil. Then who would take care of you two?"

Neil's voice was high-pitched, the way kid's voices went. His voice hadn't had a chance to drop yet.

"Someone who didn't want to fuck us."

He was being too loud. To fucking angry. God he hated it when Neil was angry.

"I haven't even touched you." he hissed.

"Bullshit, like you haven't done stuff in our sleep."

"I haven't!"

And now he was just making things up. Just lying. David really hated that.

"Face it, you're a ticking time-bomb and when you explode it's me and Max who are going to pay for it! One day we're going to wake up to you dick deep-!"

David slapped him.

He watched Neil's eyes go wide, felt the blood rush to prick at his palm, everything happening in slow motion.

The sound of the slap still ringing in his ears, David reached forward and pressed his hand over Neil's mouth and grabbed the nape of his neck in a tight grip with his other hand. He pulled the struggling Neil away from Max, out of sight.

He didn't want to hurt the boy. He was just so angry. So fucking **angry**.

* * *

When David came back, Max had a large fish near their camp. He was descaling it, his practised hand sliding their scavenged knife along the scales. He looked up when David returned, his eyes darting to either side. His question wasn't the one he expected, though.

"What was that?"

"Hm?"

"That sound. You shot something?"

"A zombie." the lie slipped out like smooth licorice.

Max looked at him, his eyes piercing through him like they did every time. David stood under the scrutiny, sweating and shaking.

Max nodded and it was like all of David's marionette strings had been cut. He collapsed next to Max. The boy shuffled over, leaning his back against David's side. It felt like after they had first meant when it had just been the two of them against the world.

Max never asked where Neil had went. David never told him.

**Author's Note:**

> I almost last minute changed Candy to Daniel and Neil to Space Kid. But Candy & Neil where my original idea so I stood by it. I think Neil's personality was more necessary, even if Daniel is more suited to being predatory.


End file.
